G Jason Terry (1995-96 to 1998-99)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Arizona guard Jason Terry celebrates a 78-76 victory over Stanford while riding on the shoulders of fans who stormed the court at McKale Center on Jan. 28, 1999.<\/p>\n
Benjie Sanders, Arizona Daily Star<\/p>\n
Once a commit to Washington who flipped to Arizona in part because of his mother’s intervention, the Seattle native gave serious consideration to returning home to play for the Huskies as a sophomore after a limited freshman season at Arizona.<\/p>\n
He stuck it out, and his patience paid off. Terry started 18 games early in his sophomore season of 1996-97 while Simon was suspended, then played a key reserve role during the Wildcats\u2019 national championship run.<\/p>\n
He played off the bench again as a junior in 1997-98 and then scooted over to point guard in 1998-99, when the Wildcats\u2019 championship core had otherwise departed. That season, he became a first-team All-American.<\/p>\n
Still UA\u2019s all-time steals leader (245), Terry became the No. 10 pick in the 1999 NBA Draft and, fittingly, went on to become the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year in 2008-09. He also picked up an NBA trophy in 2011 with Dallas and played a full 19 seasons in the league.<\/p>\n
F Luke Walton (1999-00 to 2002-03)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Luke Walton drives around Wyoming’s Marcus Bailey in the first half of the second round of the NCAA Tournament in Albuquerque on March 16, 2002.\u00a0<\/p>\n
David Sanders, Arizona Daily Star<\/p>\n
Did we mention that it\u2019s hard enough picking guards for a Lute Olson team? How about forwards? Gifted players such as Richard Jefferson, Andre Iguodala, Michael Dickerson and Chris Mills were among the possibilities, along with rugged Michael Wright, human pogo stick Hassan Adams and early Olson-era standout Pete Williams.<\/p>\n
But we\u2019ll go with Walton because of his \u201cpoint forward\u201d versatility, passing and court IQ, not to mention the significant role he played on Arizona\u2019s 2001 national runner-up team and its dominant 2002-03 team.<\/p>\n
Walton finished his career as one of only three players in Pac-10 history to collect 1,000 points, 500 rebounds and 500 assists, and was respected possibly just as much for the intangible glue he provided on the court. He especially elevated the Wildcats as a junior in 2001-02, after Arizona had been depleted by early NBA Draft departures, leading them to a Pac-10 Tournament title and surprise Sweet 16 appearance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"G Jason Terry (1995-96 to 1998-99) Arizona guard Jason Terry celebrates a 78-76 victory over Stanford while riding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":833896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[1982,7,217,9432,818,98827,41136,98828,231,772,1400,1544,98829,863,22055],"class_list":["post-833895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-arizona-wildcats","tag-basketball","tag-college-basketball","tag-damon-stoudamire","tag-final-four","tag-jason-gardner","tag-lute-olson","tag-miles-simon","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-ncaab","tag-point-guard-u","tag-steve-kerr","tag-tommy-lloyd"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117259237028981181","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}